First of all I was like, ‘I'm the most hated celebrity?' More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do? All I can do is be my authentic self, but I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know, that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment. He [my father] said, ‘You are completely on your own. So he never gave me anything. I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund. So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn't work for what I have, that's just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception.
Gwyneth PaltrowRelated topics
anything authentic celebrity draw example father given idea might mouth perception rent see self silver somebody sort spoon trust wealthy work thingsRelated quotes
Earlier this year we went skiing and I was in a shop, paying a bill and there was a woman standing there whom I knew slightly. I was waiting for my bill and she was buying something, a tea strainer. Quite suddenly she said to me, 'Where was your Father killed?'. I was very surprised and blurted out 'Oh Anzio'. Now this is a woman of about my age, so she's 40-ish. She said, 'My Father was killed in the war'. Apparently somebody lent her a copy of 'The Final Cut' and she had listened to the whole thing and she had found it very moving. In fact she said it had moved her to tears. She told me this, standing in the shop, with some effort I suspect, and I remember thinking: That's enough really. It doesn't matter if the Americans don't buy it.
Roger Waters
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.
Gore Vidal
I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support them while they create great works of art, then they've missed the point of my work, of my life! In the process of becoming a writer or an artist one has to be willing to starve. Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation.
Henry Miller
So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed-after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels-to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art-for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.
E. E. Cummings
I am one of those people who can't stand to see corpses.... But there is one good thing nature gave me. I can switch off and forget very quickly, without trying to.... I still have a very devout saying from my youth, and I always do it when I find something horribly unpleasant and I can't stop thinking about it. And in order to forcibly distract myself, do you know what I say? You'll laugh! "I believe in God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, died under Pontius Pilate, suffered" and so on and so on, "was raised from the dead," and so on. I somehow realized early on, as a child - still a devout believer at that time, of course - that once I'd said that, I didn't think about anything else.
Adolf Eichmann